Procter & Gamble Cashes in on NFL Patriots’ Success

by Christopher Freeburn | November 4, 2013 1:08 pm

[1]Every time the NFL New England Patriots play a home game, millions of TV viewers hear the name Gillette Stadium[2].

Consumer product giant Procter & Gamble (PG[3]) pays $8 million a year to keep the name of its iconic men’s shaving brand on the stadium. It paid $57 billion to buy Gillette about eight years ago, Yahoo Finance notes.

That’s cheap in comparison to other stadium-naming deals. By contrast, Citigroup (C[4]) pays about $20 million a year to slap its name on the stadium of baseball’s New York Mets, while insurer MetLife (MET[5]) shells out $16 million a year to attach its name to the stadium used by New York’s two NFL teams.

While Boston is a small sports market — compared to New York, Los Angeles or Chicago — the track record of the Patriots over the past decade and a half means that more people tune into football games featuring the team. That puts the name of their home stadium in front of a wider range of TV viewers and potential customers.

The Patriots have appeared in five Super Bowls since 2000, winning three of them.

Five years ago, Procter & Gamble sent 20 executives on 300 trips to India with the goal of developing a razor specifically for the Indian market[6].